Feature Review: Sand Valley Golf Club

Sand Valley is one of the more remarkable creations you will find… anywhere. It was designed by Tilander and Ristola and opened for play in 2009. The course has that feeling of isolation and, given what you will encounter, that is only fitting. Sand Valley is a manufactured sand-based inland links that can feel, at times, like the surface of the moon.

Whether or not Neil Armstrong would agree is a moot point, because you will have a riot here. Vast swathes of fairway – up to 150 metres wide in places – make driving a dream and even with the snaking waste bunkers streaking along beside you there is little trouble to hold you in check. There is a ‘but’… and that is you need to find the right position on the fairway to take on the heavily contoured greens which are dramatically shaped and squeezed in by bunkers.

As a link-like course, the best approach is to keep the ball low and the spectacular green complexes are set up to entice you to do just that. And what a joy it is to watch your ball tumbling over fast, firm fairways and onto the putting surface.

Trees typically appear as spectators leaving the rippling landscape and sand features to create the drama. They do threaten sporadically – the 2nd and 9th most notably, where they are a serious problem off the tee – but most of the time their job is to frame the holes. And what a job they do.

There are good changes in elevation although nothing strenuous. On several holes the elevation is used to show off the hole to maximum effect. Nowhere more so than on the remarkable par five 12th. From the tee your drive drops down into a channel of fairway and waste bunker. Find the fairway and consider yourself lucky for this is a risk vs. reward shot. As is the next: from down in the channel you must hit up onto a fairway that then bends sharply right and down to the green. If you can see the green for your third, be very happy.

Not all the holes are quite so dramatic, but the drama is ramped up time and again, with at least eight holes injecting such an adrenaline rush that it is impossible to pick a signature hole. The 3rd, 4th, 6th and 9th are the focus on the front nine; on the back it is the two par fives, on 12 and 15, and the long par three 17th. Your approach shot to the short par four 9th (345 yards, middle blue tees) that will terrify you the most with its sand-drenched, chasm-like drop short of the green.

At 6,500 yards from the regular blue tees, Sand Valley is not too long. (It measures 6,050 yards from the forward green tees.) There are a couple of big holes – the par four 6th is Index 1 at 460 yards – but there are five short par fours to make things more interesting. And the run on the fairways is so good you’ll feel very muscular indeed.
The clubhouse is small and at the end of the row of fully-furnished self-catering lodges. It’s not somewhere you’ll want to spend a lot of time but, given the golf course, the practice facilities and the lodges (barbecues, saunas, outdoor pools), that’s no great hardship.

There are so many different ways to play (and appreciate) this course that you will definitely want to play this course twice with greens of bewitching shapes and ponds scattered about to add a splash of colour. This is a course to be walked and tackled with low running shots.

For more information visit: http://www.sandvalley.pl/en/

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